Instead, we're putting the teleplay up for sale, along with a passage about our writing adventures in Burbank. Our not-so-secret hope? Someone, somewhere, will actually like the story enough to contact us about filming the thing.

The chances of that happening? Slim and None, and Slim just left town....

You see, Debbie and Keith are friends of ours and we will, on occasion, put a friend's name in one of our stories. The name acts a temporary place marker, allowing us to visualize a character and truck along with our tale. Debbie herself appeared in Something Wicked, only to be replaced with the fairly generic "Jennifer Carr" when the book went to press. If your name is Jennifer Carr and you're reading this, you've got a GREAT name. Please order several copies of our novel. We thought, for a minute, maybe we'd killed Keith in SW but, no, he's absent from the high school crowd. We knew we'd killed him in The Atheist's Daughter -- his body sat in a car trunk for the longest time -- but the manuscript is being rewritten and Debbie hasn't seen it. ("Barry Collison" has since taken his place behind the spare tire.) Wicked Games, then? Well, death by werewolf does occur for some but not for Keith....

Which left our under-a-buck Kindle collection, After Things Went Bad, and, yep, there he was. In 'Wintebury Circle', the second of the three stories, our buddy gets well and truly scrunched. We'd like to point out that he's referred to as "a nice man" in the tale and that we felt no personal happiness at his demise. He's practically the hero of the story, really.

Meanwhile, we've been popping up a couple of other places, too. Much, much nicer places than the Blog-O-Rama but... important side note here... these particular places are YA-oriented and, so, don't offer any talk about wine. You want a sniff of booze with our writing, you still gotta come here. Jessie Harrell (she says we aren't related to her) brought us over to Oasis for YA, where we discussed what drove us to self-publish SW. It's a sad, sad tale....

Then Alanna, the Flashlight Reader herself (she says we aren't related to her), drove us over to the Flashlight Mansion and we did the full-fledged Author Interview thing. If you'd like to know what Jack the Ripper has to do with our YA mystery, you'll find it there... and pretty much, nowhere else. The interview is fun, a little silly, and made all the better by Alanna's own comments.

It’s happened to me, and I’m seeing it happen to several of my writing friends. In the race to be published, you submit pretty much indiscriminately to agents and publishers who publish your genre and are open for submissions, and are not on the Predators & Editors blacklist.And one morning, you download your email and lo, there is an offer of publication.

Once you’ve finished jumping around, you sit down and have a look at the contract. But really, you don’t know anything about contracts. You don’t know what’s supposed to be in them, and what the standards are. The publisher making the offer is a small publisher. You don’t know them. You don’t have an agent and have never been able to get one for this particular book. You don’t have the publishing credits to belong to a professional writers’ organization. You check the internet for information, but it contains cases about contracts that are obviously dodgy, and you’re reasonably sure this publisher is not a scam.

So you’re stuck up the creek. You feel you should be happy, and all your friends are happy for you, but there are a number of things that make you uneasy.They could be any of the following:

The publisher is also using the press to push his or her own books. It happens. There is nothing as such ‘wrong’ with it, but do you want to be published by someone who may give his or own work preference when it comes to marketing?

The contract you get asks for rights the press doesn’t intend to use. For example, they sell only ebooks, but they want you to sign away the print rights. They are inflexible about changing this.

The person you are dealing with comes across as not very professional. For example, not all your questions are answered, or it takes an extra-ordinarily long time for you to get a reply. There may be deadlines (if you don’t accept this by…), or pushing of a certain editorial service. Whatever it is, it’s not illegal, but you feel uneasy about it.

You check the press’ web presence and the listings for a couple of their books (randomly-chosen—don’t pick their most popular titles) are not encouraging. You can barely find the books on Amazon, and when you do, there are no covers and no reviews.

The venture looks like an author-mill: it has books listed by many authors, and seem to be pushing quantity over quality. None of those things are illegal, and some of their authors seem reasonably happy.But you’re still unsure.

Let me ask you a question: if you were to plan an extensive home renovation, and you asked for quotes, and the company offering the cheapest quote had a lousy telephone service, took three days to get back to you, and only sent the quote after you rang them up and asked them for it, would you sign with them? Would you trust them with your money and your beloved house?

A publishing contract is a bit like this. Moreover, once you sign, you’re stuck with these people for a while. You had better like their professional conduct and feel that they could do the best by your book.

If you feel iffy now, imagine what you feel like three years down the track. A publishing contract is an agreement of service: of the publisher, to you. You are going to have to work with these people. One of them will edit you work. Any inter-personal difficulties or differences of opinion will be blown out of the water by this process. You don’t want to start off feeling dubious about their professionalism. These people will design your cover. They will send you regular sales updates. Do you feel confident that you’ll like what they do?

If you have doubts that you’ll be able to work with these people, I’d think twice about signing.

About Patty Jansen:

Besides a writer of crazy fantasy and hard Science Fiction, both self-published and in traditional media, Patty Jansen is slush reader and editor at Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. She blogs at http://pattyjansen.wordpress.com/, about writing, about science and about editing and slush piles. Patty is a winner of the second 2010 quarter of the Writers of the Future Contest and has published in the Universe Annex of the Grantville Gazette and has a story forthcoming with Redstone SF. Find her fiction at Amazon or Smashwords.

So we go to Absolute Write, our writing hangout, and we make this offer: We'll give anyone ATWB, free, if they'll please post a comment about the stories on Amazon. Say something nice, say something mean, we don't care. We'd rather have an honest opinion than a total lack of reviews. One person takes us up on the offer, reads the stories, then contacts us to say that Amazon won't let him post his comments because this was a gift item.

Such is the world of the self-published. No sales, no comments, no luck. *sigh*

The image on the left is not the cover of our book but, oh, how we wish. We like the cover we used, don't get us wrong, but we love us some giant ants.

We were about to give up hope when we staggered across something called Sift Book Reviews. Sarah Nicolas, an engineer-writer, and her team of fellow reviewers (an eclectic group, including a nanny, a software engineer, a psychiatrist-in-training and a speech-language pathologist) were actively reviewing self-published sci-fi. And, friends, no other Gang O' Five anywhere else in the universe is actively seeking self-published ANYTHING to review.

Quick like bunnies, we write the woman and make our pitch. Which pretty much boiled down to please, please review our stuff. She e-mails back and agrees to give our collection a look.

A year later,Ye Olde Publisher didn't put out our novel, after all. When things went ka-blooey, our manuscript was returned, our rights were returned, and we decided to go rogue. We also decided to change the name of our novel to Something Wicked. (Turns out, most search engines don't like interdots in the middle of a name.)

Since SW was appearing under the Hunting Monsters Press label, we decided to do it right. One of our early, big decisions was to find the right cover artist. We did, too. Matthew Turner, graphic designer -- he did the HMP logo -- created exactly the cover we wanted. But better. We couldn't be happier.

We'll share more about the book soon. But, as these words appear, we're a little busy. Right now, we're grabbing a bottle of red and starting to celebrate!

There's more to come -- including a tattoo-based contest -- but we'll share those details once we have 'em. Right now, we have to get back to work, editing A.L. for publication. As Steve may or may not have said, "I want that final edit by May 1st or, I swear to you, you'll burn in Hell...."

One of our correspondents felt the image had a strong similarity to The Dream Spell by E. Daniels, published a few months back. (We see DS is selling very nicely on Amazon. Damn those 99-cent books.) We also had people talk about a listing on Pegasus News -- here -- and something or other at OmniMystery -- here -- and on and on. We realize now that this is a graphic that gets used a bunch.

We want to be clear here: When we asked about the cover, MM was honest with us. She told us she used a stock photo for her cover. It's a great and cheap way to provide a great and cheap but not necessarily unique image for a self-published novel. We did the same thing for After Things Went Bad (like DS, it's a 99-center but, unlike DS, it remains largely unloved) -- and a quick search found a similar cover to our book, too. It's here, you dirty, dirty person.

So... Michelle's cover? Maybe not totally new and fresh. But her novel? That's completely original. Which is the important part, right?

In case you're wondering, if all of our friends jumped off a cliff, would we jump off, too? Why, yes, we would. Our friends are smart people. If they're jumping off a cliff, they must have a good reason to do so. Since we're not quite as bright as them, we'll follow their lead.

When Lainey dipped her toe into the self-pub waters, we knew this was a significant move. She's been blogging about the possibility but had never taken the next step. Now she has and we're impressed. It's time we quit talking and finally acted.

You'll notice that both of these women were smart enough to find great covers for their writing. (V. J. Chambers does her own cover work and she does terrific work. Seriously. Lainey went with a pro and the pro did a wonderful job.) We've contacted our professional graphic designer of choice and he's hard at work. If we can get the formatting in place, our novel goes into the ether in April.

We made our contribution to the cause -- at kiva. org -- and received notification, the next day, that the full amount had been covered. Good news. Yes, yes, we know we haven't talked about writing or wine ... and, we promise, we'll get back to that stuff soon enough. As it happens, we have some news but it'll have to wait 'til next time. This is Irma's moment to shine.

The guy we didn't love so much? He said he'd do the job for a single C-note. But then we remembered the swell job 1 Rat Studio did on our short story collection ... and the extra swell price she charged, since Renée is the Queen Rat. As these words are being typed, she's editing and painting and graphic-izing. Stick with us and we'll show you what she comes up with.

Harrell? At this mo', he's busy thinking deep thoughts. Which he does best while imbibing a fun red wine. In this case, we're talking a glass of DAOU Vineyard's Gingerberry wine. Cheers!

Our life doesn't suck. Our manuscript, though... (Feb. 8, 2010)...may be a different story. We'd run The Atheist's Daughter past more than one beta reader and the response was lovely. That said, no one wanted to buy our manuscript. Three agents read the words and passed. Our Dream Publisher took months and months...and passed. So, wondering if we were truly ALL THAT, we rolled up our sleeves, called in favors, and found a trio of hotshot professionals.

We located three readers, all of them female, with two of 'em working in the publishing biz and the other having worked in the industry before. They agreed to read the book individually but to discuss the story as a group. When they sent us their comments, they'd be open and honest...and they'd package all of their comments in one letter. They wouldn't charge us a penny but we'd never know which person said which statement.

This arrangement worked for us. Our thought process went like this: When a crowd offers praise, does it really matter whose voice is the loudest? A couple of days ago, we received their response. And, friends, their e-mail was more than honest. It was brutal.

Our confidence in our novel was apparently misplaced. According to our new readers, nothing truly worked. Someone said the story's pace was jagged (and all of them thought Chapter Two c-r-a-w-l-e-d). (Another one wasn't that fond of Chapter Three, either.) One reader thought there was logic issues -- two readers didn't, so it could have been worse -- and one of our pros was confused by our Big Bad's motivation. As a group, they liked the characterizations we offered except for our MAIN CHARACTER. She was called two-dimensional. No one loved Kristin like we love Kristin. And then...and then....

When we got up the next morning, the kitchen floor was covered in water.

So we called out a repairman -- hey, we were sick-ish -- and the repairman tell us our refrigerator has gone bad. Needs to be replaced. Immediately, if we want to keep things cold...like the dog medicine we use to keep our useless but beloved pekingese from going blind. So we spend the next several hours, shopping at the few places selling appliances in our pint-sized town, check reviews, select the cheapest too-expensive model available, and go home. To rest. To just take the remainder of the day off. From writing, from work, from everything.

Finally back in our nest, we hit the garage door button...and the garage door goes BOING, a metal something flies through the air accompanied by a variety of screws, and the entire assembly thumps earthward. Because we've spent so much on a repairman's visit and a new refrigerator, we roll up our sleeves and get to work.

And, now, we've received even better news. Our joy of joys, David Danger, is going to have a sibling. We're months away from the happy event -- DD's mom is still in the magical "grab the toilet bowl and puke" first trimester -- but we're thrilled. After all, WE'RE not the ones permanently stationed in the bathroom. Tomorrow is gonna be great but, in our house, the celebration has already begun.We survived 2010. Howza 'bout... (Dec. 20, 2010)...you?

We signed a contract with a UK publisher, finally finding a home for our quirky science fiction novel (good!) but, wouldn't you know?, now they want to edit the thing...and you already know how things go with us and editors (bad!). Most importantly, we recently had to deal with a scary medical prognosis -- and 2010 suddenly seemed like a dark year, indeed. Thanks to some good doctors, we're moving into 2011 with a happy step and high hopes. Assuming, of course, that the medical bills don't kill us first.

But, as you know, it's never that easy. We had trouble formatting the pages for Smashwords so we tracked down Lucinda Campbell, who did the job for us. Then we knocked on Amazon's door and THEY didn't like what we offered, either. We hadn't changed a thing but paragraphs had gone wonky, the indents were madness, and we couldn't figure out how to fix any of it. We whined at Lucinda so she stepped in and corrected those problems, too. (And charged us not a penny. She's swell.)

Finally, finally, we were done. Except...we weren't done yet. Our novella had appeared on Smashwords but only in its Standard Catalog. The Standard Catalog alone is a terrible place to be. Y'see, with the Standard Catalog, only the seven people who visit the Smashwords site will ever see the story. And those seven people aren't looking for End-of-the-World sf tales. They're primarily searching for romantic super-porn, involving the Girl Next Door, Congorilla, and Tootsie Roll Pops.

No, ATWB needed to be in the Smashwords Premium Catalog. When something is in the Premium Catalog, it can be seen throughout the known universe (Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony -- and on and on) and there's a chance that, someday, somewhere, someone might even download the story. It takes days for Smashwords to approve any work for its Premium Catalog. No one knows why. It just does.

We discovered yesterday that Bad was NOT approved by the Smashwords Premium Catalog Committee. Turns out, we had macros in our book (we don't even know what macros are) and we'd spelled "Smashwords" as "SmashWords". So we removed the story, placed it in Word, and hit buttons at random, trying to vanquish the evil macros. We corrected the spelling mistake. And we sent everything back to Smashwords which is, again, going to take days to see if our work deserves to be in the Premium Catalog.

This publishing thing is madness, we tells ya. And expensive, too, but that's a post for another day. It's time to open another bottle of red.

There's a name for trying to sell things without telling anyone about them: Subsurface marketing. The theory goes like this: Instead of Tweeting or Facebooking or doing a worldwide Blog Tour, the Subsurface writer spends their time writing another project. Then another and another. Some fine day, if they're good enough and lucky enough, they'll build a readership and some kind of following.

The thing is 77 PAGES LONG. Written in a friendly and confusing manner, it talks about buckets of stuff. Already overwhelmed, we randomly flipped through the pages to find a section called Choose a Paragraph Separation Method -- and our blood ran cold. We flipped again and discovered HOW TO DEFINE TRAILING SPACE FOR BLOCK PARAGRAPH METHOD (their capitals, not our's) -- and it was, game over, man. We don't want to choose a paragraph separation method. We don't care to ever define trailing space for block paragraph method...whatever the hell that means. Let somebody else CHECK FOR EPUBCHECK COMPLIANCE (somebody at the Smashwords factory loves to capitalize stuff, we guess). We threw away the Smashwords Manual of the Damned, opened a bottle of red -- a fun Murphy's 2005 Merlot, as it happens -- and pondered what to do next.

This is what we did next: We found Lucinda Campbell, romance author and a woman without fear. She stepped in, fixed the files, and sent us on our way.

To our great surprise, Wicked Games continues to sell digital copies to the discerning readers of sculptor/werewolf/romance lovin'. We actually sold more copies last month than the month before...despite a complete lack of internet interest or book reviews. Oh, don't let us fool you. We're not getting rich here: The average Cobblestone publication sells 200 copies in its first year and we're on track to hit that number. In case you've never been here before, the image to the left is not the cover image to our novella. This particular image is by the wonderful Mimexart and we only wish she'd provided a copy of her work in 300 DPI. You want to see the actual racy photo cover, you'll need to look down below or over in The Bakery Thing section. Still, we were pleased to get our last royalty statement.

On the we've-signed-a-contract front, our editor tells us the publisher has received the signed contracts for Aly's Luck. This would, on the face of it, appear to be wonderful news -- except that we've dealt with editors before, dear hearts, and we know better. Now that the contract is signed, Ye Editor will roll up his sleeves, dig in, and force us to improve our manuscript.

Our first published novel? A tiny YA mystery, with decent sales and a follow-up printing in the UK. Ellis? He wrote a half-hundred novels, built a huge fan following, and his books can be found, to this day, well -- everywhere. His Outlanders series alone sold over a million copies.

Ellis
also has a lovely wife, Melissa. Melissa works with her husband -- like
Renée works with Harrell. Melissa is a graphic designer -- like Renée.
She's an artist -- like Renée. She writes -- like Renée...but, unlike
Renée or Harrell, she and her husband have created a wonderfully
popular non-fiction book called The Everything Guide to Writing Graphic Novels. So, just as M.E.appears to be a more successful version of Harrell, M.M.E. appears to be a more successful version of Renée.

It
turns out we're the Bizarro-version of the Ellis clan. We am not happy
about this. No wonder we're forced to make-do in a modest desert shack
while they romp about their 55-room mansion on Fishers Island. Okay,
yes, we might be wrong about the Fishers Island thing. We don't have
any idea where Mark Ellis lives but we're positive he and his wife must
have a mansion somewhere.
Staffed by maids and gardeners and a poor, arthritic man servant named
Burksley. And the masters of the house treat Burksley poorly, yes, they
do, just because they can.

Ellis and his wife even have better hair than we do. Seriously. You can look it up, here or here or here
(or at the two sites shown above -- because, of course, M.E. & Co.
have several different websites while we struggle along with our lone
Blog-O-Rama). Coiffed and talented as they are, the Ellis couple have
one saving grace. One single redeeming feature that we admire very much.

At this very moment, Prescott's own Sacred Bean is sponsoring a show for one of the city's finest artists. (Hint: It isn't Harrell.)
The Bean is a fun coffee house, offering poetry readings, live music,
spontaneous karaoke and whatever madness fills the proprietor's head on
any given day. Francesco is unlike any other shop owner we've ever met.
He embraces the beauty of the weird and different and he does so every
day. He welcomes just about anybody even you and you to have a Certified Organic cup o' joe while you ponder the universe.

This
November, he's dotted the coffee house walls with 19 of Renée's oil
paintings. If you stop by, you'll see half-skeleton women, lovely
flowers, an evil Barbie and her beautiful twin, Cinderella Barbie.
You'll see works with titles like Who's Zoomin' Who? and Devil's Claw. There's no guarantee you'll like the artwork but, we promise, you won't be bored by the sights around you.

Swing
by tomorrow night and Renée will even offer you some nibbles and a
glass of wine (or, if you're not yet of age or inclination, a glass of
cider). And, if neither appeals, you can always grab a Certified
Organic cup o' joe.

Burdened
by a huge class load and a new job, the man's simply too busy to keep
the site running. Oh, he'll finish the books that are in queue for
review and if a publisher sends him a new tome, we expect that
volume will get the Luke Review treatment, too. But after that? After
that, we're all out of luck. Personally, we expect LF to focus on his
future -- and that includes writing his own novels.

We've never met Luke face-to-face and he has steadfastly ignored our requests for a photo,
even after we said we were only joking about the voodoo curse. We're
almost positive he's this guy, though, because we found his pic under
the "F" listing of public domain photographs. Clearly, this is either
Luke Forney or William "Ice Pick" Forgi, pig butcher and suspected
serial killer. We're going with Luke 'cause, clearly, this gent is
dressed exactly right for book-reviewing.

The
scorecard, as we see it, reads like this: We lose our favorite book
reviewer. And a talented new writer will soon have the time to provide
some strong competition in the battle for the handful of publishing
slots out there.

DWS (called "the Deanster" by his friends) first talked about the Magical Bakery on his website. His concept goes like this: A
baker makes a pie, carves it into slices, and sells each slice of the
pie until it's gone. For a writer, his/her words are the pie and the
writer's stories make each slice of that pie. But the writer's bakery
is a magical one, in that
s/he can sell the same slice of pie over and over again. For instance,
DWS ("the Wes-inator" to those who know him most intimately) sold a
story to an anthology...and then sold the same story to ANOTHER
anthology...and then sold a hold on the story to a Hollywood media
outfit...and still has the story to sell again and again, should he
chose, via Kindle or Smashwords or iBooks...and on and on.

By the way, you don't have to be a writer to start your own Magical Bakery. An artist selling glicées is doing the same thing. A
photographer selling prints or stock images is doing the same thing.
But, we've gotta tell you, it's a nice business to have, this Magical
Bakery.

Inspired by DWS ("Mighty King Smith!" to his legions of fans), we're about to open our own M. Bakery with After Things Went Bad: Three Tales of the Near Future. And,
absolutely, this will be our first venture into self-publishing -- DWS
strongly supports self-pub, wouldn't you know? -- and, absolutely, this
bold new step makes us nervous.

We found a "Simpson character generator" but the damned thing doesn't work. So we wandered around the 'net -- Hey! Tony Curtis has passed away...and writer Christopher Pike is stirring up a controversy! -- and came across the character-generating "SP Studio" right here. We put down our glass of wine and went to work.

Since
you're asking, yes, Renée was without clothing when she painted herself
with an eye in her mouth. Harrell is still NOT a cowboy but continues
to look good in a hat.

Since Cobblestone Press e-shipped our pages, we've knocked on several doors, trying to get someone to read and review our paranormal romance, Wicked Games. Of course, YOU know about that! But what if this is the month that a new person comes to the Blog-O-Rama? They need a little back story. To our surprise, the good people at Sensual Reads.com finally stepped up and did the job. We were surprised because -- well, um, we'd never thought to ask them to take a peek. Just like they never thought to let us know they'd reviewed the darn thing.

So,
today, we stumbled across their quickie review. (That's not a slight,
by the way. All of their reviews are quick reviews. It's actually kind
of a fun site if sensual romance reading is your kind of thing.) So
what did they think of WG?

Well, it got a thumbs' up -- which is 'way better than a thumbs' down -- and they flagged the novella as Like. Like is good, as it turns out. It certainly beats, "Don't waste your $4.99!" But on the star rating? 3.5 outta 5.0.

Their bottom line? An
interesting were tale with the were consumed by the blood moon. The
story unfolds with a mystery twist that throws Kelli and Dravon back
together. The love that Dravon feels for Kelli projects through the
story and I really liked the sculpture elements that play into the
heated attraction they feel for one another. The reviewer gave the story a "Sensuality Rating" of Sultry which, in Sensual Reads lingo means,"Like kissing your hot first cousin".

Still and all, our very first review. And, now, time for another glass of red.

Sadly, we learned that Zellie had just passed away. If you go to her website,
she tells her story with humanity and a great deal of bravery. Cancer,
that awful bitch bastard of a killer, found her in June and took her in
September. Two days before she died, she was able to announce that Spliced Lightning was now available in print and as an ebook (and, if you'd like to order it, go here. Proceeds will go to the American Cancer Society).

Although we contractually had to create all of these accounts, we didn't actually have to do
anything with them. So, on the advice of several fellow writers, we
mostly didn't. Our fellow writers had homes in these same places and
none of them had seen an uptick in book sales. That doesn't mean we
didn't do anything: We started this website and, amazingly, discovered
we enjoyed posting on the Blog-O-Rama. Because we like being here,
MarsNeedsWriters.com is stickin' around. We've grown fond of you and you. But for the rest?

We've
made a few weak, blind stabs at making Facebook work but we gave up on
MySpace the millisecond our MySpace account appeared. (Our friend, V.,
told us her MySpace account had thousands of...MySpace friends?
Followers? MySpacians?...and no one cares.) We continued to exist on
CrimeSpace -- if you call two postings in a year's time an "existence"
-- because we actually like to visit CrimeSpace.

Then there was Twitter. Twitter
just irritates us. For quite awhile, we had one follower, which was one
more follower than we'd earned. Then we got another. Another. On a
roll, we tried a few rifts on ebook writing but our hearts weren't in
the game. We wanted out. So out we are.

If you're one of our
eight Twitter followers, we'd like to say (a) sorry; (b) it wasn't you,
it was us; and (c) have you considered following us on MySpace?

Y'see, we've continued to shake the bushes for our very first review of the story...and, so far, we've had a some promises but no results. No one has knocked on the Blog-O-Rama door to say they've loved the story/hated the story, our family members haven't purchased the thing (a strange group, our family members, and they almost never visit the website. Which allows us to say things like, "a strange group, our family members"), and even our financially-stricken best friends haven't picked up a copy. (But those friends DO come to this website so we want to say right here, right now...you rock!)

So we were feeling a little down. Then, today, Renée received a royalty check. She was delighted. Then Harrell received a second royalty check -- we forgot that CP pays each half of a writing team their half of the royalties -- and we were doubly delighted.

Oh, don't let us kid you: We're not gettin' rich here. (If we were rich, our family members would haunt this website like a mausoleum. They may be a little weird but they're not that weird.) Our windfall is in the three figures and we've got several months to go before we have a shot at being thousand-aires. If we ever get there at all.

We love free. So we jumped at the offer, shipped off our pages, and waited to see how we should change our book's beginning. Caitie F. quickly responded with this: Your novel is the worst, most cliché-ridden garbage I've ever read in my life. By the time I'd finished your first page, I was praying for death so that I wouldn't have to read another word of this injustice to the English language. Quit writing. I beg of you. Quit writing now.

Naw, she didn't say that. (Although we feared she'd say such things.) (Well, one of us worried about it.) (Okay, okay...it was the hippo.) To paraphrase, she said the writing was good, the story was interesting, and she liked the descriptions/the characters/the creepy bits. She pretty much gave us a high five for the full 50 pages. She also liked our query letter, saying -- "This is the kind of query I always hoped I would find in my stack."

Many thanks, Caitie F. We appreciate your feedback. We only wish you STILL worked at Writers House....

We're still dropping by Kiva.org on occasion and have just made a loan to Telman Varosyan of Karnout, Armenia. Telman needed more fertilizer for his vegetable farm, Kiva provided the cash, and we've just chipped in $25, too. It seemed to us that writers and fertilizer were a natural fit.

But dark clouds are gathering over our Young Adult mystery, Something Wicked. Even though our publisher continues to show the title as Coming Soon, we wouldn't bet on it. An August release date isn't happening. Even a September release seems doubtful.

If you're like us, you're wondering how somebody so damned cool ended up at fiverr.com. "To be honest, this is the perfect way to keep me busy in all aspects, creatively and mentally," Miriam tell us."Also, the jobs are helping me learn a new design program (which is my nightmare because I'm not a graphic designer but I like to teach myself to do new things)." Okay, we get that. But doing an ebook cover for five bucks? Why, oh why, did she ever take the gig?

It turns out, our request amused her: "I created your book covers because nobody ever asked me to do one for a romantic-drama-novella before. It was fun and I'm happy that you like them."

That we do. We've posted the covers on Facebook, we've talked about them at Absolute Write, and now we're telling you and you. Spread the news! If you feel like spreading the news. It's not like we're your bosses or anything.

At fiverr.com, people do all kinds of things. You want someone to build you an "awesome website"? Somebody at fiverr promises to do just that for just five dollars. Want someone to pose as your Facebook girlfriend for a week? You can buy that, too, for five bucks. What we wanted was an ebook cover -- and we bet you can guess how much we paid.

Fiverr offers all kinds of people willing to do ebook covers. We could have had a "high quality" cover, a "professional" cover or a "fabulous" cover. We contacted our first designer and told him we'd written a sexy romance novella. Told him the story had already been published, already had a lovely cover that we liked very much and this cover is the one we'd continue to use and promote. But, said us, we wanted the cheapest ebook cover ever and we thought it would be fun to get one for five smackeroos. We told the designer that we'd blog about it and might use his cover at other locations, such as Absolute Write. We told him we might mock the cover ("Look what you get for five bucks!") or might praise the cover ("Look what you get for five bucks!") and there were no guarantees which way we'd go.

We said the novel's name was Wicked Games and the storyline was this: College girl meets the man of her dreams, a talented sculptor, but he's really a werewolf. Everything ends with a Happily Ever After but not before much drama ensues. After our initial e-mail, we never heard from this designer again.

So we contacted a second designer, told 'im what we wanted...and never heard from him again. We contacted a THIRD designer, told 'im what we wanted...and he delivered a cartoon skyline of a city. We asked him why and never heard from him again.

Finally, finally, we found the lovely Mimexart. Living in England, she's an artist and a model and she'd never done a romance cover before. Our pitch struck her fancy and she dug in. She did THREE covers for our $5, sent them for our approval, and we ended up picking...well, all three. We'd forgotten to ask for our name on the cover so she went with the title only. (So why does this cover have our name on it? When we contacted Mimexart again, she added the author's name just because.) This is the first of the covers. Next post, we'll share another cover and tell you all about Mimexart, the World's Finest $5 Ebook Cover Artist of all time.

If you ever decide to hire your own cover artist...(July 26, 2010)...you should know, they charge hundreds and hundreds of dollars. The good ones do, anyway. You knock at Carl Graves' door -- he did the terrific cover to J.A. Konrath's TRUCK STOP -- and you can expect the conversation to start at $300 and climb from there. He's absolutely worth it. Cris Griffin isn't cheap, either (and, Cris, we loved your illo for FantasyFlightGames), nor should she be. These artists are some of the best in their field and the e-book industry is so new that their fees are in flux. You ask us, they're charging less than they should be.

We've been having conversations about e-book cover art because, recently, we came across a terrible e-book cover. When we poked about, we discovered the artist had been paid $350 for the cover and its electronic file. Just to be clear here, the artist is NOT Carl Graves or Cris Griffin and, for our money, isn't worthy of carrying their digital paintbrushes. THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS for a cover so bad that we started laughing when we saw it.

So. Terrible cover = $350. Being in one of those moods, we tried to assign a dollar value to the terrible cover. We finally decided on a satisfyingly low number before one of us wondered how cheaply we could really, truly get an e-book cover. Because if the end result is going to be embarrassing, why pay the big bucks? Why not save a few dollars?

And we did. We found an artist who agreed to provide us our very own original e-book cover for a five-spot. We've received notification that the work is done, the cover's complete, and we'll receive our electronic file in the next few days.

When we do, we'll share it with you. Good or bad, you see it first.

A woman of mystery...(July 22, 2010)...this Emily Veinglory. We know her real name is not Emily Veinglory and her past is hidden in the mists. We know she has a cute "bedroom" name but she refuses to divulge what it is. (We're guessing, "LeeLee". She knows why.) Following our extensive interview, what else have we truly learned?

She's a Kiwi. Not the flightless bird endemic to New Zealand but, rather, the flightless human endemic to New Zealand. She left home over ten years ago and has traveled the world ever since. She's worked in the UK, in Canada, and she presently toils in the USA. No one (except, possibly, E.V.) knows where she lives at present. No one (except, again, E.V.) knows what she does for an outside income. She may have followed in the footsteps of the legendary John Steinbeck and found work as a freelance Podiatrist but we've been unable to confirm this rumor.

We've never seen a photograph of the woman so we're making some educated guesses here. Because she's an NZ native, she must be a stunningly beautiful redhead (but insists she's a brunette). Her eyes are green (possibly brown) and her personality is so vivacious that most people never notice the hunch on her back. She has many of her own teeth. We've heard she's worked as a Supermodel in the past and may be a Diesel Mechanic at present but we've been unable to verify either occupation.

She started writing out of...Boredom, mostly, she tells us as soon as we quit inventing her personal history. I kind of enjoyed making up stories so writing them down wasn't much of a stretch. I think I started my first book, Broken Sword, around 1997. I'd already started off by getting good feedback in fandom, then non-profit 'zines, then publishing. Without an audience, I probably wouldn't have written these stories.

About that pseudonym: The Veinglory origin story is rather dull. I was trying to get a Hotmail address (back when Hotmail was cool and dinosaurs roamed the earth). At the time I was writing what I thought would be my first novel and the main character was called Vesper Vainglory. "Vainglory" was taken...so Veinglory it was. If I knew I was going to be using this as a pen name twenty years later, I might have put a little more thought into it.

To this day, the sun shines a little less brightly because she never finished her Vesper Vainglory the Vampire novel. But she still managed to produce, oh, a story or two. If you exclude stories under 20,000 words, she tells us, I've written five novels and fifteen novellas. Because I'm predominantly an e-publishing author, I favor novellas. If you take into account price points and relative sales, the most profitable length of ebook is to write them in the 20,000 - 40,000 word range. Her specialty is gay romance with a paranormal twist. (You know what sells BIG these days? Guess....) I write whatever I want and that's the theme that emerged. I write in the overlap of what I enjoy and what the publisher wants. I could write more commercial books but it would quickly become a chore. My editors at Loose Id and Samhain have been very good at indulging me to some extent. We both know that paranormal with lots of hot sex sells the best but sometimes I just want to write high fantasy with a paraplegic hero. Maybe it won't sell as much but it will still do okay. Right now, I tend to stick with those e-publishers I think can make me close to $1000 a title so that narrows the field considerably.

As it turns out, she writes more than we do (and had the chops to write a non-fiction book for a scientific publisher but not under the glorious Veinglory moniker). She makes considerably more money than we do. She tells us nothing about her personal life -- a telltale sign of a serial killer, we're just sayin' -- and seems offended when we press to know more about the creepy mechanical monkey she keeps in the shoebox under her bed. But we like E.V., we like her a lot. And you know why?

She tells it like it is. She shares her experiences with publishers. She freely tells people how much her writing earns. (People are sometimes a little shocked, she says, like I said a bad word or flashed my boobies, but they don't seem offended. It just isn't something they would be crass enough to do.) She also runs a terrific website at ERECsite.com, where other people also share the scoop on how much money they're seeing. One of the reasons ERECsite.com reports sales is that it is a little less worrying to people than reporting their actual earnings (and, of course, the reports are confidential). So far, I've not had a single person say something negative about the project, at least not to my face. In fact, several publishers -- including Ellora's Cave and Changeling -- have been very supportive and encouraging.

At the end of the day, then, what can we tell you about Emily Veinglory? Well, if you're an e-writer, she's got your back. If you're an e-publisher, she's going to tell the world the good AND the bad about you. If you're an e-reader, she's got a sexy story coming out in September (see the image above). But if you're a pair of investigative Blog-O-Rama writers, trying to find out the truth about our elusive Em?

You'll learn so little about her personal life that you'll be reaching for a bottle of red wine by interview's end. Which, y'know, is kind of a win. Pass the corkscrew, would you?

When we needed to find a publisher...(July 14, 2010)...we went to Absolute Write, our favorite writing forum. Because Wicked Games is a steamy romance -- and because we were new to the genre -- we wanted to get some advice from the pros. We were hoping to learn which publishers did the right things the right ways. As Harrell posted on AW, "Which publishers treated you and your manuscript right and provided you with a positive life experience?"

There were several suggestions but one respondent stood above the rest. Emily Veinglory told us about the good publishers...the not-so-good publishers...even the bad publishers. She made it clear she was only sharing her opinion but she shared that opinion publicly and for the good of her fellow writers. A brave move, if you ask us. We listened to what she said, too, selecting Cobblestone Press for our werewolfish novella.

CP provided a great experience, from contract to cover art, from editing to marketing. (PNR says they'll be reviewing WG soon. Stay tuned!) Impressed by this Veinglory person, we started to watch for her comments at Absolute Write. We followed her blog. She turned out to be open and forthright with her thoughts. She seemed to be on the penny with the advice she gave. We decided she just might know ebooks better than anyone else we'd ever met.

So what did we do? We picked her brain, of course, asking about ebook publishers once again. We wanted her list of favorite publishers, a list of the up-and-comers, and we wanted her take on Ellora's Cave as a publisher ('cause rumors abound). This is what she told us:

I tend to list five strong publishers based on sales and lack of enormous red flags: Samhain, Ellora's Cave, Loose Id, Liquid Silver and Cobblestone. Amber Quill and Changeling could probably be added to that list and Ellora's Cave is a bit iffy based on their contract and occasional crazy behavior (pink flags). My main publishers are Loose Id and Samhain but I placed The Highwayman with Cobblestone because it fitted well with their "Outlaw" line and they are more accepting of first person narratives. It has been a good experience. I would also suggest Aspen Mountain Press as an e-publisher that is steadily developing into a front runner.

Then, because it's been on our minds lately -- and, oh, what a story we could tell -- we asked about ebook covers. Seems to us that some publishers have great covers while other companies provide terrible cover art. Since E.V. has a long string of titles with her name on 'em, we went with the obvious question: Does an ebook cover matter?

Never shy, she told us -- I do think covers matter. I think my breakthrough novella, Eclipse of the Heart, was helped a lot by its cover. Funnily enough, I didn't much fancy the cover when I saw it so I've learned to trust the publisher and cover designer. I always give frank and honest feedback on cover designs but at the end of the day I consider that the publisher's call because they know more about what helps sell the book than I do. In short, I'm not fond of mantitty but a lot of readers clearly are.

We have to admit, this woman intrigues us. She willingly talks to strangers of a publisher's crazy behavior and doesn't hesitate to bring up the ever-popular mantitty. Isn't "man titty" two words? And aren't you glad to be visiting a Blog-O-Rama brave enough to ask the hard questions? Oh, and there's one more thing: As much as E.V. talks about publishing, she never, ever talks about herself.

Is she a shy little minx...or a New Zealand super spy? We wanted to find out more. We did find out more. In a few short days, we'll share all.

When life throws you lemons...(July 10, 2010)...you're in real trouble if you're allergic to lemonade. Something to think about, eh?

Here's the good news: Beta reader Kathy has finally finished reading The Atheist's Daughter. The great news? She really liked the manuscript. As always, Kathy has been supportive and encouraging, and she's provided some insights that absolutely rock. If you're a writer, she is the kind of person you want at your back. We'd tell you more about her but...she's a mysterious person, this Kathy. No last name. No home address. She's provided no personal information, no picture, and no one way to find her. But, if she's willing to read your words, she'll find you.

That's what happened with us, anyway.

The image above? Looks good, doesn't it? It's a gift basket from DAS Designs and -- in theory -- you're supposed to send the thing to people who are in distress. In reality, one of two things will happen: You'll either eat the cookies yourself because impulse control is not your strong point; or you'll send it to the distressed person, they'll eat the cookies and love them, and then they'll grow even more depressed because they can't buy THEMSELVES a basket of lemon cookies because that would just be pitiful. Better not to buy the basket at all, that's what we say.

But Kathy's words and suggestions definitely fell in the Good News category. So where's the Bad News? Who has thrown lemons in our direction?

Our publisher, that's who. The senior editor contacted us last night with some news. It seems we have a new editor for Whispers. Another one.Our third new editor in the last five months, if you're counting. He's enthusiastic ("I still think we can make the August publication date!") but he's never done this kind of work before. Any kind of editing work, any kind of work in publishing at all. He's sent us an "edited" chapter and, we've discovered, he simply rewrote the thing. Which makes us not very happy. There's a long road ahead, we fear.

Woe is us. We could really use some lemon cookies right now. Or wine. We're flexible.

The fireworks may have ended two days ago...(July 6, 2010)...but not at this house. And that's because our very first romance novella has just gone into print!

You'll find Wicked Games on the front page of the Cobblestone Press website. Top row, dead center, just look for the book with the extra fun cover. And, yes, the publisher does want a wallet-tingly $4.99 for a download --- available in PDF, LIT, HTML or MobiPocket format (whatever the hell MobiPocket is) -- but look at what you get for your money: A great cover, an erotic romance, "explicit language and graphic sex", and the always popular college girl-meets-werewolf paranormal sexiness.

Plus, the college girl is pretty positive her guy is cheating with a female werewolf. Because she kind of, um...caught 'em in the act.

Look, we don't expect you to drop a fiver on our wicked little tale. We know you. Some would say you're frugal. Yes, 'frugal' is the word we use when we mean 'won't buy our damned novella 'cause they're so darn cheap'. That's okay, we're frugal, too. But if you go here, you'll get to read the story's first chapter absolutely FREE.

When we wandered through our publisher's website, we discovered that our YA mystery, Whispers, was Coming Soon. (Why didn't anybody tell us?) Wanting to know if our book was truly Coming Soon -- since we lack a cover and our manuscript is still in edit -- we contacted the head of the company. (You can do such things when the company is very open and very small.) Turns out, the CEO thinks everything will come together shortly. Our pages remain on schedule and our book should be available no later than August 15th.

Feeling pretty damned well upbeat, we strolled over to the Cobblestone Press website. If you check here, you'll see that our spicy romance, Wicked Games, is Coming Soon! at their site, too. The cool thing about the CP site? They show the book titles AND covers and everything seems the more official because of it. We're pegging the release date for July-August but there's no official word just yet.

(1) Let's use our royalty check to go to Italy! (2) Think I should bring extra pens for the book signing? (3) We're finally in our second printing!(4) Do you think Universal will buy the movie rights?(5) Honey, he was just another one of our groupies. He meant NOTHING to me. (Actually, no writer has ever been able to say this.)(6) The foreign edition has a much better cover.And finally --(7) My agent told me....

Let's talk about Vino Lisa, SexTV, and the amazing...(June 20, 2010)...Lyman Dally. This guy ranks fairly high up the cool meter -- and, better yet, he creates some really fun and interesting paintings of wine.

Our good friend and photog, Ralph DeHaan, knows LD and thought we should meet him, too. Turns out, Lyman's a Renaissance man. He's been a competitive bodybuilder and fitness trainer, created over 5000 editorial cartoons, had a comic strip called Max Rep that ran for a decade or so (and continued as a comic book after that), is the genuis behind Maxim's "Most Popular Cartoon Ever", has his own web comic called Living with Les...and, according to IMDb, appeared as "Himself" on SexTV.

A bodybuilding fine artist that's been featured on SexTV? Oh, yes, my friends, you can definitely count us in on that action.

Sadly, the SexTV thing isn't nearly as titillating as we'd hoped. When we pushed LD to tell all, he did. "Hah! I totally forgot I was on that!" he said. "Anticlimatic as it is (no pun intended), I was interviewed by the show about the female lead in my Max Rep Cartoon series. Nothing tawdry; and no naked three-way girl orgy scenes, dammit."

We strolled over to his website, Oentourage -- go here -- and we found some terrific artwork that we desperately want to own. We know you'd like us to own one of his paintings, too, because you're generous that way. Figuring our royalty rate on the Renée Harrell books, we need each of you to download at least 378 copies of one of our volumes and, bam!, we'll be able to buy a Dally original! Score! Following Ralph's advice, we knocked on Lyman's door, snooped around the premises a little, and thought we'd share our findings with you.

Turns out, LD picked up his paintbrush and started his Wine Art That's Fine Art™ not very long ago. This was a huge leap from anything he'd done before and, we assumed, the people around him must have thought he'd gone crazy. "My mother-in-law is still trying to convince me to do something else," Lyman says, working on the theory that his Mom-in-law will never read the Blog-O-Rama. "But that's what mother-in-laws do, right? Friends and family are totally behind me. They all love wine, too."

Working primarily in oils, it took him two years to feel confident enough to display his work. He recently had a gallery show called Imagination Uncorked. "Despite the terrible economic times, I've found a few collectors who like my vision," he says. "Others seem to struggle with my grimmer work (which, of course, I especially love!)." So he's building a fan base but still hasn't made oodles of money: "Those oodles you speak of still hover on the horizon. I've made perhaps an 'oodle'."

When you visit the LD virtual gallery, you'll find canvases with titles like No Beer in Heaven and Wine Knot. You'll see wine bottles twisted and curled and skeletons pouring themselves a drink. You'll see artwork that teases the brain while presenting images you've NEVER seen before. "I like to deal with the odd and emotional elements of wine drinking," Lyman tells us. "Every wine drinker experiences these whether they realize it or not so I try and capture that 'flavor' in my work." Somehow, someway, we think he does.

We're ending the post here so we can swing on by and drink in a few more of his paintings. You ought to try it, too.

Things were going wonderfully until...(June 15, 2010)...she said, "The cover of Wicked Games looks just like a REAL book."

Now, we wanted to be insulted by the "REAL book" comment but, c'mon, our friend was only trying to be kind. Besides, S.Grey did a terrific job on the WG cover gig and, if you didn't know better, you'd think you were looking at an actual, off-the-shelf, romance novel. E-book sales may be soaring but for people without e-readers, a real book only comes in paper -- and we get that.This image is from Only You, Dick Daring! by Evan Rhodes and Merle Miller. A few years ago, Harrell bought the volume for a dime and he thinks it's great. OYDD! is absolutely a real book. Harrell only wishes the publisher would make it a little less real and provide an electronic version.

Recently, another well-meaning person asked us, "So how much was the advance for Games, anyway?" (Family can ask these things without being rude.) In answer to the advance question, let us say this about that:Hahahahahahahahahahaha!

We researched this, we really did, and the average e-book advance is...zero dollars. If you write two of 'em, your advance doubles. So how exactly do we hope to make a profit by writing these things? Volume.This is pretty much how things look at our house...(June 11, 2010)...during the summer. We let our hair down, remove articles of clothing (hey, we're in Arizona) and relax. But this hasn't been our typical summer and we're stressed. Our friends are stressed. The whole world is stressed!

Why are we so stressed?Well, we've spent three weeks working on ANOTHER preliminary edit of Whispers and have just-this-second sent it out the door to the editor. Said editor is a demanding taskmaster and has forgotten that SW is a just an e-book. She's intends to make us work on it and work on it until it's actually good. She doesn't care that our royalties from the book are going to only amount to coffee money -- and not Venti coffee money, either. That's one reason we're stressed.

Another reason? T.A.D. is in the ether, waiting for beta reader Kathy to share her wisdom before we submit the pages to a publisher so we figure we'll need to make changes on it, too. Kathy is good but she ain't quick. Meanwhile, Renée is still preparing for her solo art show and Harrell's decided to...well, work on Secret Project X but only because Renée isn't available for playtime.

Summer used to be all playtime, all the...uh, time.

Enough is enough. Once the Blog-O-Rama is updated, we're dropping the paint brush, turning off the word processor, and reaching for an alcoholic beverage. For the rest of the week, we're cruisin'. We hope you are, too.

So let's run over the time line again. We signed the WG contract on April 9th and were assigned an editor about a month later. That editor was the lovely Leanne Salter.

Please note: This photo is not of our editor, Leanne. Cobblestone Press didn't supply us with a picture of Leanne and, so, we're forced to imagine what she looks like. Now that we're done editing our romance novella, we imagine she looks something like this. Only better.

In mid-May, L. Salter e-mailed to say we'd be receiving our first round of edits in about a week. Instead, we received them one day later. A week after that, we received our second round of edits. Three days later, our third round of edits. Then we were done.

But, you ask, what about our other manuscript and our other editor? Y'know...the pages that motivated us to start this website waaaaaaay back in 2009? We're glad you asked.

Whispers is undergoing a second marathon writing session. Once this rewrite is done THEN we'll start the official edits!

In April, shortly after CP offered us a contract for our weremance™ (our term for a sexy werewolf/romance novel), the editor invited us to select our cover artist. We were strongly tempted by the amazing Cris Griffin -- and listed her as our #2 choice -- but we went with S. Grey. Sable's a writer and a graphic designer and we liked the cover work she'd done in the past. Her covers seemed fresh but contemporary and we felt her talents would best reflect our modern romance story.

We assumed she'd be able to follow simple instructions so we sent her our cover ideas. Our hero is a werewolf by night so we wanted to see the moon or some moonlight in the piece. One of us suggested giving the hero glowing eyes (but subtle) so we tossed that in. Dravon's a talented sculptor so...let's see...we thought she should add a couple of statues in the background. Oh, and we wanted to see our heroine on the cover somewhere. Kelli should be doing -- something. Naked. Mix the elements all together and -- voila! Super Terrific Cover Art!

Now take a minute and ponder the image above. Do you see a naked heroine? Naw, didn't think so. Statues in the b.g.? Nope, missed out. Glowing eyes (but subtle)? Didn't happen. How about the friggin' moon? Do you see the friggin' moon anywhere? After all, every weremance™ ever written has a cover with (1) wolves or (2) claws or (3) the MOON on it somewhere.

Not our story. Not Wicked Games.

And you know what? We're delighted. Sable nailed the look of our two main characters. We think the cover is sexy, enticing and one of Cobblestone's best. Would it be even better with the moon in the background? Probably not.

But what if she'd put in TWO moons, glowing eyes, some claws and some naked wolves? Well, now you're talking.

So what have we learned...(May 30, 2010)...about expensive hotels, kayaking, and wine tasting? Frankly, we think we should do these things more often.

The expensive hotel (expensive for us, anyway): We stayed at the Sedona Rouge, right off of the main drag, and it was an eye-opening experience. In the past, we've tended to stay at places with "Budget" or "Econo" or "Super" or a number in their names...and you're never going to have a swank experience in one of those joints. You can have a good experience but you're not going to have a swank experience. Still, we live in the hope of someday finding the Super Econo Budget 8 Hotel. We assume it will be staffed by cockroaches and cost eight cents a night. Our favorite thing about the S. Rouge besides the complimentary bottle of wine they provided? We loved our super sized shower. It fit, roughly, eight people. But Harrell wanted a bathtub, too. "Just think of how big it would be!" he said, over and over.

The kayaking: Our guide, Felipe, is used to running large groups down the river so we were surprised to find only one other couple in our party. The other couple was surprised to find us in the party. A decade younger, infinitely richer, attractive, fit, with stomachs so tight we bet they're doing crunches right now...the Johnsons spent much of the trip talking about their NEXT adventure. (Hiking the Grand Canyon. They figured they could do it in eight hours or less.) They mostly pretended we didn't exist as we sent our individual kayaks into the trees, onto the rocks, and deep in the bushes. At the end of the excursion, we'd learned two things: (1) The other couple knew much, much more about kayaking than we care to learn; and (2) the Johnsons are apparently ignorant about the value of sunscreen. When we waved goodbye -- and they pretended not to see us wave goodbye -- they were the color of Petit Verdot grapes. Ah, but we had fun and our guide was charming.

The wine tasting: At the end of the river, we found Alcantara Vineyards. Owners Bob and Barbara served us cheese and crackers, poured us wine (again and again and again because Felipe was driving us back to the hotel) and talked about their ambitious plans for the future. Bob went into the wine biz once he'd retired; it seems to us, he's working harder than ever. Barbara, the visionary, charmed him into starting their empire. If everything goes to plan, they're going to build a bed-and-breakfast, a bistro, other shops, bring in all kinds of artisans...and we're not betting against them. For now, we were glad we had a chance to kick back and enjoy their 2008 Merlot (Harrell's choice) and take home a bottle of their 2007 Moscato Allegro (Renée's pick).

Happy/sad: Puppy pictures make us happy but we find it sad that such pictures help drive traffic to a website. Just know that we'd never stoop to such tactics. Let other websites brag about their thousands and thousands of followers. We're happy to have you and you.

Happy/sad: We're happy to have two manuscripts in edit but sad because we have to edit them. (We wanted to hear that both pieces were perfect. Plus, we're lazy. Is that so wrong?) We've learned something about ourselves in the process, though. One of our editors opened her first e-mail to us with a comment on how much she liked our story...and then made some pointed comments on how much work we needed to do to get it ready for publication. The other editor opened her initial e-mail with pointed comments on how much work we needed to do to get the pages ready for publication...and followed her suggestions with why she enjoyed our masterpiece-in-the-making.

The editor who complimented us first? We instantly liked her more.

Enough about us. How are YOU doing?

It's time for William Shatner to quit whining...(May 18, 2010)...about that darned gremlin on the wing of his airplane. Bill, old buddy, we've got you beat. There are TWO gremlins on the wings of our plane.

In the classic Twilight Zone episode, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, Bill plays Robert Wilson, a salesman freshly discharged from a sanitarium and taking a flight home. Once airborne, he spots a gremlin on the wing of the plane -- and the gremlin is casually dismantling parts 'n' pieces of the airliner. He flips out, yelling and shouting, but no one else ever sees the gremlin. Once the plane lands, Robert Wilson/W. Shatner finds himself getting fitted for a straitjacket.

Once upon a time, we thought the show was only a fun fantasy. We know better now.

Our tale to date: After months of no interest, some folks said they wanted to see The Atheist's Daughter. Trying to be adult-ish (not easy for us), we put our noses to the grindstone and started rewriting the novel for this would-be publisher and this unlikely-as-Hell agent. Halfway through the manuscript, Renée had to visit the internet on a synonym-chase. Seconds later, she shrieked in alarm: "She's baaaaaaaaaack!"

Shockingly, our Whispers editor -- our own personal gremlin -- has returned to the Airship Arizona and is once again casually dismantling our lives. Almost magically, she's zipped through another round of edits on Whispers, is somehow dissatisfied with the superlative job we've done on the book, and she wants us to work on the thing again.

Harrell wasn't prepared for this quick turnaround and took the news poorly. But we sucked it up, put the projectaside, and picked up Whispers. Renée wandered off to the internet again, this time on an antonym-hunt. "Oh, my God!" she cried, seconds later. "There's another one!"

Yes, friends, to our horror, another editor had alighted on the Airship. This one called herself Leanne Salter, she claimed to be the Managing Editor for Cobblestone Press, and she'd written to say she'd be editing our romance novella, Wicked Games. Like J.R. Turner, she refused to supply us with a personal photo or her bank account information. Hmmmm. She'd contacted us to say she'd have our edit available in a week.

The very next day, she wrote again. Caught up in WG, she stayed up all night to edit the damned thing. She sent the manuscript back to us, with hundreds of teeny, tiny changes. So what did she want now? She wanted us to fix the story. Right this second.

In short: Bill Shatner, if you thought gremlins were trouble, we'd like you to meet our editors.

In case you're wondering,Harrell wears a man's large straitjacket, extra-long sleeves. Renée fits nicely in a woman's medium. How do we know this? None of your business, Snoopynose..

A few days ago, Brandi from Cobblestone Press e-mailed us. She'd received our manuscript a few weeks before and the gang at Cobblestone liked the story...but they wondered if we'd be open to making some changes. She didn't know it (and we weren't about to tell her) but this wasn't a small issue with us. Directly prior to sending the manuscript her way, we'd been contacted by another editor at another publisher and they liked the novella, too -- as long as we did a pretty significant overhaul on the storyline.

We liked the publisher but thought the suggestions didn't work. We decided, instead, to submit the story elsewhere. When a writer we respect told us Cobblestone was among her top three romance publishers, we were intrigued. After a touch o' research, we knew exactly where WG was going next.

As it turned out, Brandi's list of changes were minor and, more importantly, we agreed with 'em. We made the revisions, sent her the pages, and here we are. So the really, really good news? We sold our romance novella (!) and checked off one of our New Year's resolutions.

Meanwhile, Renée Harrell flits along happily, writing a little of this, a little of that, and building a very small following, indeed. (By our count, there's you... and you. We're so proud.) If we want to be successful, dammit, we need to pick a genre and stick with it.

The subject comes to mind today because an Acquisitions Editor has contacted us, saying she's interested in Wicked Games. If things work out as we hope (minor story-tinkering involved), we'll soon be signing a contract for a sexified werewolf novella definitely intended for an adult audience. Then, in August, our Young Adult mystery novel comes out.

There are those at AW who'd say we need to adopt a new pen name for the werewolf tale, when and if it comes out. Presumably, they fear we'll develop a following for our YA mystery and those same readers will rush to buy the much steamier WG, assuming it's another YA mystery -- and their brains will explode.

What the hell. Ignoring the collective wisdom of all of those other writers, we've decided to keep the same semi-pseudonym on everything we write. After all, it's not our brains. But since we're gonna continue to write all kinds of different stuff, we thought we might come up with a logo to represent the Renée Harrell Brand. You see the logo on a book or a novella or a short story or a bounced check, you'll know that Renée Harrell was involved. Plus, if we farted around with logos, we wouldn't have to do any real writing today.

We checked with a top design firm to see what a logo could cost. They said they'd want a minimum of $25,000 to launch the project -- and our brains exploded. So we went to Logosnap.com, instead. Logosnap charges a lousy ninety-nine bucks to design a corporate logo. Or, if you're just too darn cheap to drop a C-spot, you can use their site to design your own logo for free. People who go the "free" route will find limited fonts, limited graphics, limited...everything. But -- and we can't emphasize this enough -- it's free.

A better cover = better sales. Seems kinda basic to us but we somehow find a new book cover e-trocity almost every day. While such discoveries fill our house with laughter, we wondered: Just why are there so many bad e-book covers? Since we'd recently been in conversation with digital artist Christine Griffin, we decided to ask her.

This is what she said:

"There are a couple of fundamental reasons why there are so many bad covers. First, the publisher just doesn't know any better. Their visual vocabulary is naive and their understanding of design non-existent. Cover design looks easy but there's more to it than meets the eye. I'm still learning myself after ten-plus years! You never stop learning."There's another truth in e-publishing: You get what you pay for. Many e-pubbers look at cover art as a necessary evil that cuts into their overhead and, therefore, try to pay the bare minimum. What they don't digest is that the cover is the best way to hook a reader who is unfamiliar with the author and get them to read the blurb as well as buy the book."

And then she went on and on because, honestly, the woman's trapped in her house with the computer all day and you can only do digital art for so long before you go kind of wonky and suddenly, bam!, you're desperate for adult conversation, desperate for ANY kind of human interaction, and you keep talking and talking and you end up saying so much more than you ever intended.

Too much for us to share today, in fact. But be here on Monday and you'll see what we mean when...Cris Griffin tells all! Well, no, it's not really all that juicy but it IS interesting. Y'all come back now, y'hear?

So far, the e-cash register isn't ringing too loudly. We know of one talented sci-fi writer (Hi, Chris!) that knows all of the electronic bells and whistles and, man, is he promoting his new novel. He should, too: The book has received a couple of glowing reviews. Chris has been open to interviews, he's hit all the social networks, he's established his blog, he's talked up his story at most of the s-f/writer/novel forums...and he's sold less than ten copies of his ebook in the last three months. By his own accounting, he hasn't quite collected $15 in royalties.

But give him time. W. Shakespeare and us, we believe in Chris and electronic publication. But short-term? We're keeping our day jobs

Our new publisher knows the literary biz is tough and they want their writers to push every button to make a sale. We understand this attitude. When we're not feeling lazy, we even applaud this attitude. But when our good publisher suggested we do an electronic book signing when our YA novel finally comes out...well, it took us back a bit. We didn't think an ebook signing would work but we didn't know it wouldn't work. We realized there was a world of stuff we didn't know about peddling ebooks. An internet search didn't help much. Writers' forums did, a little, but not enough.

So we started e-mailing e-writers and asking them about the e-business of selling e-books. Almost everyone responded and, to our surprise, quite openly. We collected their replies to our questions.

This is what we learned:

There's a general feeling that electronic publication offered only a small financial return for author and publisher alike. Turns out, a lot of e-publishing sells poorly. At the top of the sales chart is hardcore erotica (BDSM, M/M, super kinky trysts, that kind of stuff). Contemporary M/F romances, even the steamy ones, don't have as many fans. Those novels are selling between 200 - 700 copies. Other book genres sell even fewer copies. The list ofless successfulgenres definitely includes YA novels, including our own Whispers. One YA author revealed she'd written four young adult novels and not one of them had topped 100 book sales.

But what about an electronic book signing? We really wanted to know if this could actually work and we were delighted when someone managed to answer the question. "I tried it and found it to be an embarrassment and a disappointment," wrote the only author who'd arranged a "signing" of their electronic book. Total sales from the signing? "Zero, zip. Because I bought a coffee to take to the signing, I actually ended up losing money."

But, honestly, our correspondents aren't big-name writers. (Stephen King, you bastard, why didn't you answer our e-mails?) We asked, had any of them tried advertising their books? Say...on the internet?

Three of our correspondents had spent the cash to advertise and all three said it made no apparent difference in their book sales. As one wrote, "IF it made any difference, I can't spot it. I'm damned sorry I put 90 bucks out of pocket." Well, then...how about trying something a little more creative? Had any of them made a book trailer? A writer makes a 90-second book commercial, they stick it on YouTube, all the kids love YouTube, they'll build an audience. Won't they?

"Most book trailers are crap," one of our writers said. "I spent a lot of time and too much money so that mine would be better than most. I've never had a reader tell me she bought one of my books because of my trailer. I'm not making another."

If the new media wasn't moving product, how about trying the old? Had anyone sent out press releases?

"Mailouts?" one novelist wrote. "Epic fail." Another writer told us she'd sent out thirty press releases to the publications in her area and heard back from one of them. ("They published a single paragraph about my book. I felt lucky to get it but the sales meter didn't budge.") A couple of writers felt that giving away free bookmarks had sparked interest in their novels but they weren't sure if anyone bought an e-dition because of it. However, they did say that people were still asking for the free bookmarks many months later.

Knowing what we know now, what do we think we should do next? This is our plan: We'll write some really nasty, wicked, embarrassing sexy-thing, find a publisher for it, follow the tips in the blog below, and notify our banker that we're about to get rich. Richer, anyway. Rich-ish.

For some crazy reason, she actually told us. Then, her madness magnified, she let us share the scoop with you.

Valerie’s been writing since she could hold a pen; does it for the joy of the thing; and only considered self-publication after manuscript #4 had been rejected thirty-odd times. She said, “Honestly, I was discouraged and I saw in self-publishing a way to have more control over whether anyone would ever get to read my stuff.It wasn’t the greatest reason to start self-publishing“.

The easiest thing about self-pub? “Uh, nothing about the process was easy.”

The hardest thing? “Editing!!!! God, I suck at editing my own stuff. Furthermore, it is no, no, no fun. Laying out the book is no cakewalk, either.”

Her biggest surprise about being her own publisher? “I was surprised at how hard I worked and how little results it actually produced. I started having panic attacks shortly after starting and started neglecting my boyfriend. I really had to back off for my own sanity.”

But she’s making a lot of money, right? “Absolutely not.”

Then, um – “I love the direct interaction I have with readers,” she says, “and I love that they feel comfortable enough to talk to me and interact with me.”

Which is what writing is supposed to be all about. That’s what we think, anyway.

She might not be J.A. Konrath but V.J. Chambers has done okay. She's sold hundreds of copies of her various works (BREATHLESS, alone, has had a thousand readers) and one of her novels lingered on the Smashwords bestseller list for months. Visit her website and you’ll find her blog, some book trailers, and several *free* sample chapters from her novels.

We like free. We also like Valerie Chambers. (And wine. Did we mention that?)

J.A. Konrath is an ebook bestselling author, collecting some serious coin on the 30,000 downloads of his books last year. His blogspot is viewed by 500,000 visitors a year. (How many do we get? You and you. And not even that on Sundays.) Before we discovered his "Newbie's Guide to Publishing", we wondered if anyone could make a living selling ebooks.

Now we know. Joe Konrath makes a living selling e-books. Everyone else?

They starve.

Okay, that's harsh. And it's not true. Not entirely true, anyway. You see, after we questioned whether people were earning anything from their books, we decided to go further. We collected the names and email addresses of twenty-five e-authors. We wrote them, asking how they promoted their ebooks and how successful they'd been. Many of the writers have responded to us. Almost everyone was amazingly open with us.

We're struggling to find the right publisher for Wicked Games. The problem is, our little tale apparently isn't nasty enough for the two biggest cyber publishers. We still think the idea of sex + love = the most fun. We thought if we'd written an interesting, steamy, werewolfie romance, we'd be in clover.

We thought wrong. The world has grown much kinkier since last we looked.

We've been unable to find a single literary agent that actively promotes sci-fi space opera. With a shrug of our respective shoulders, we've sent Aly's Luck off to its first publisher. Fingers crossed...and more about that later.

We've found a lovely beta reader for The Atheist's Daughter. Kathy has been picky but encouraging, providing exactly the kind of insight we'd hoped to find. But, because of her, we have to rewrite the whole damned thing.

This is what he wrote back: My life is pretty much the same it was as when we last spoke. I was making no budget films then, and I'm making no budget films today. My films weren't hugely popular then and my films aren't hugely popular today. I suppose, if anything, over time my expectations have become more realistic. It was tough to sell a film back in the day and it's even tougher today. Why, then, was he still behind the camera? "I suppose it would just be the passion I have to make films. It's a passion I've had since I was 13 and just never went away."

We admire anyone who holds onto their dreams. We think you must, too, or you'd have quit hitting the Blog-O-Rama weeks ago. If you'd like to pick up a DVD of any of the Pirro oeuvre -- there's nine films, including Nudist Colony, A Polish Vampire in Burbank, My Mom's a Werewolf, and Curse of the Queerwolf -- just follow this link.

And Mark? Next time you need actors? Harrell was born to play a zombie cowboy. And you can see that Renée looks great with an eyeball in her mouth.Just follow the contact link on this website, big guy. We look forward to discussing our starring roles.

All singing! All dead! Yessir...(Feb. 13, 2010)...we're talking about the Musical of the Living Dead.

Every now and then, we get an itch to look at another un-famous writer's words. In Harrell's case, he discovered a screenwriter named Garrett Gilchrist. Garrett needed a beta reader for his latest screenplay -- a musical about love, zombies, and the end of the world. Once Harrell discovered the subject matter, he eagerly volunteered to read the Musical of the Living Dead.

Beta reading is a tetchy business and there's no guarantee that an intriguing premise will result in a well-written screenplay. In this case, Harrell got lucky. Musical isn't a perfect screenplay but it's a funny screenplay (well, the funny fades at the end. As you'd expect, things turn pretty grim once the zombies triumph). We don't know if Garrett will sell his pages but, we're telling you now, the man knows how to write.

If you want to know more about G. Gilchrist, go here. If you want to know more about Musical of the Living Dead, well...contact him through his website. Harrell says this is a cult classic waiting to happen.

What we need is a Match.com for...(Feb. 9, 2010)...for writers and their beta readers. We were pleased when we found Luke Forney and he did his beta read/review of Aly's Luck. We foolishly assumed we'd quickly find another reader for our YA paranormal novel, The Atheist's Daughter. So far...it hasn't been as easy as we'd hoped.

Our first beta reader knew T.A.D. was basically a paranormal/horror novel but she was disappointed that the characters in the story weren't...nicer. She wanted our heroine, Kristin, to be more pleasant and we understood that. But she also wanted our monsters-in-human-form to be more warm and fuzzy and we struggled with that idea. Finally, we all decided it might be best if we parted ways.

Our second beta reader was a wonderful young man who loves our story ("This is good enough to be published!") but he abandoned our storyline to focus on our use of colons and semi-colons...and commas and quotation marks and exclamation marks...even after admitting he didn't understand how and why such things are used. It was driving one of us nuts so we thanked him warmly: before sending him; on, "his" way!

These beta-folk were good people and, sincerely, we thank them for their time and efforts. We're not kidding about that, not the tiniest bit. And now, a third beta reader has stepped up to bat. We're amazed. It's usually hard for us to find one reader.

Leave your suit at home.A big bag of nothing...(Feb. 2, 2010)...is what's going on right now. Which is, now that we think about it, is a recurrent theme in a writer's life.

Look, sometimes it's a joy to put down the words. Sometimes it's a pain. In any case, it takes awhile to slap enough words together to make a manuscript. While the words are coming together, there just isn't much of interest to fill a Blog-O-Rama.

A regular blog, sure; on a regular blog, you can write about anything. Want to talk gossip? Do it. (Flash! Dax Shepard is engaged to Kristin Bell!) (Oh, and if you're wondering, "Who is Dax Shepard?", you are not alone. According to Wikipedia, Dax played Joey the Plumber in Space in the 2008 film, Boobies in Space. We are not making this up. Regretfully, one of us wants to watch Boobies in Space.) Decide you'd like to talk about baby names in a regular blog? Go ahead. ("Dax" is an uncommon first name for men and is of French origin. It is not a popular baby name, falling well below the Top 100 Names for babies anywhere in the world.) In a normal blog, you can even talk about relationships and how to improve them. (According to Kristin Bell, "A snuggle party can fix anything". We look forward to sharing this info with our car mechanic.)

But a Blog-O-Rama, that's different. A Blog-O-Rama requires some meat, my friends. Some dark and gristly chunks of writer-y goodness to fill your appetite. Today, we have no meat to give you.

Our suggestion, then? Drink some wine. Then go here, drop down to "January 24, 2009" and you'll see the world's cutest baby moose. This has nothing to do with dark and gristly chunks of writer-y goodness but it's one cute moose.

That oughta be worth something.One door closes and then...(Jan. 28, 2010)...you have to climb through the window. That's always been our theory, anyway.

Sadly, the lovely Grayleaf Galleria is considering closing its doors (and the windows are way up high so we're screwed). Renee's artwork has been featured in the gallery for many months now and she's found some new friends and met some nice art collectors. In a tough economy, though, the art business struggles; at least, that's the way it is in our small mountain town. We know of at least two other Prescott gallery owners that say they're considering closing up shop.

This is not a good thing. We like art, we like artists, and we've noticed that a bunch of these galleries serve hors d'oeuvres on a fairly frequent basis. Harrell loves hors d'oeuvres.

Renee's enjoyed the ride, though. Grayleaf artists and patrons are getting together tomorrow night to celebrate the Galleria's history and toast to future successes. If you happen to be in our area, stop on by. We'll buy you a glass of wine. (Maybe even a glass of the good stuff.)

The pitch for her story goes like this: Trisha Ellison hopes a trip to the San Jose flower market will help her find a bloom exotic enough to suit her picky sister. When events unfold that send Trisha to the market with The Flower Basket’s hunky new driver, Rico Martinez, Trisha wonders if she’s also found a solution to avoid attending her sister’s wedding solo.

Raised by a grandmother soured by servitude to affluent white Californians, Rico Martinez steers clear of fair-haired, filthy rich young ladies. When perky wedding planner Trisha requires more than just his floral expertise to make the wedding she's planning a success, what's a sympathetic gentleman to do? Especially since he's falling for her--big time. Until he discovers she isn't just a simple, dog-rescuing wedding planner, but the sister of the bride…and daughter of Almendra's most affluent man!

See, that's a good storyline for a romance novel! It's a much better pitch than the one we offered for Wicked Games. (Originally, we thought our WG synopsis should go like this: "She's inexperienced! He's a werewolf! They have sex! C'mon, what more do you want?") Clearly, Lainey knows romance, we don't, and we're beginning to wonder if we should leave the under-the-covers stuff to the pros.

Meanwhile --

A few days ago, we saw that our buddy, Luke Forney, had posted his Top 15 Books for 2009 on his Luke Reviews website. If you're like us, you immediately checked to see if Aly's Luck is listed among his picks. If you're like us, you immediately saw that it was not.

It seems Luke has all these rules for his Top 15. The book had to be good, it can't contain speling errorrs, it has to have a front AND back cover, it must be published (and on and on...blah, blah, blah!) Frankly, his standards are unrealistically high. We'd say more but it'd be kinda cool to make the list next year.

Most years, we kind of almost succeed...(Jan. 10, 2010)...in keeping our New Year's Resolutions. This year, we want to eat healthier foods (again), get fit (again), spend our money more wisely (again), save more (again) and get our romance story published. All of the (again) items? Those are Renée's ideas. Harrell will participate wholeheartedly but, secretly, he'll pray for the day when he can sit on the couch, eating chocolate and drinking wine while wearing a newly-purchased Slanket.

The Sell Our Romance! idea belongs to Harrell but this is the first time it's been a Resolution. There are too many things that a writer can't control to make a "we'll get published" vow an actual Resolution. We keep capitalizing "Resolution" so that it seems more important and, therefore, something we need to do. Harrell thinks short, sexy romances are an easy sell -- especially if those romances involve werewolves. To prove it, he's developed a list of e-publishers that are looking for short, sexy romances that involve werewolves.

Believe it or not, it's a looong list. This year, we might actually succeed in keeping one of our New Year's Resolutions.

If we were better people...(Jan. 6, 2010)...we could do this Blog-O-Rama thing on a daily basis. After all, lots of people update their blogs daily. We are not those people.

We like blogging, we do, but we're lazy. Plus, Renée is busy painting -- her current piece is called Pissed Off and Poorly Used so you know that's not gonna be on postcards any time soon -- and Harrell was tasked with the first round of edits on the Quake book. He's up to page 150 of the thing but that leaves him 80 pages shy of being done. The edit plus the marketing strategy plus the publisher's info sheet(s) all have to be completed by Friday.

Harrell's feeling grumpy. He feels...pissed off and poorly used. (He shouldn't have called Tails when the coin was flipped.)

Renée, on the other hand, feels great. Oh, Pissed Off is a struggle but it's working out. The news that's made her so happy? She received a gorgeous necklace from the marvelous Blood Milk. Blood Milk is also known as J. L. Schnabel, a jewelry maker who's also a painter who's also a writer.

And, did we mention?, Jess Schnabel also manages to update her blog frequently. So, as we understand it: (A) Blood Milk is a writer, something we struggle at; and (b) she paints, which Renée struggles at and Harrell dare not even try; and (c) she makes killer jewelry, which we will never do for a variety of reasons -- including a sore lack of vision and skill; and (d) her pseudonym is more fun than our's and (e) she updates her blog more frequently than we will ever do AND that blog is filled with many, many fun images; and (f) we assume that she's only days away from curing all forms of cancer. Which is a good thing but leaves us envious of her many talents.

If you want to see why we enjoy her work anyway, head over to Things We Like. Sincerely, Renee's new necklace ROCKS.

If you need a friend...(Jan. 4, 2010)...you'll find us under Facebook as Renée Harrell. Ask to be our Friend and you're in. But only you and you. We don't care about those other guys.

Our new publisher asked us to sign up for these things. They want us to explore every marketing option. While we have some doubt that the 13-year old target audience for whis•pers is surfing through the various social network sites and can't wait to befriend a woman with a glass eye in her mouth and her gray-haired cowboy, who knows? Maybe the publisher is right. After all, she's the professional.

(Of course, she's not right! The whole idea is CRAZY! Wake up and smell the coffee, girl!) Actually, some of our published writer friends say she IS right.

Hmmm. Anyway, should you decide to become one of our Facebook/MySpace/Crime Space friends, know that we haven't yet developed that habit of visiting Facebook/MySpace or Crime Space on any regular basis. That will change as our publication date approaches but, for now, we'd rather you stop by here to say hello.

Deal?

With 2010 almost upon us...(Dec. 31, 2009)...we've decided to be lazy. For today's Blog-O-Rama, we're going with little tidbits of minimal interest. For something more substantial, you'll probably want to head over to a better blog.

Kiva is finally paying dividends. If you want to see what kind of big money returns we're looking at, head over to Random Things and take a look.

We won't be going to the movies tomorrow but we've recently enjoyed Sherlock Holmes -- which is better than its trailer but still ain't all THAT good -- and Avatar in 3-D (which is better than Sherlock Holmes but still ain't all THAT good). If you'd like to start your 2010 with popcorn in your hand, you could do worse than one of these flicks.

We've rewritten our romance novella Wicked Games, adding some depth to our Alpha male and raising the story's word total by a bunch. The best thing about the rewrite? Now we don't kinda like our story; now, we actually like the story a bunch. Which is not a bad way to end the year.

And may 2010 be a wonderful year for us all!

Okay, so we were working on our "Author's Bio"...(Dec. 27, 2009)...and we suddenly felt very silly. An Author's Bio? From us? Get real.

Who in their right mind would buy this particular novel from us based on our biography? As you no doubt remember (fake it if you don't), whis•pers is a paranormal teen mystery that features our heroine, Ann, and her best friend, Kim, battling a Big Bad that's come back from the grave to kill them. One of 'em, anyway. Since the Big Bad thinks that Ann is the love o' his life, brought back to life and ready for action -- well, he has other plans for her. Which is creepy in its own way.

So. Our target audience is 13 years and older and we have to wonder: Has any teenager, anywhere, decided from the Author's Bio to grab a title? And, if that teenager used our Bio as their tool in choosing a book, then that's a teenager that we want to avoid. The poor soul has some serious issues.

It's not as if we could bail on the Bio, though. Our publisher expects us to provide many things before our teen tale becomes a book. One of these items was the Author's Bio and they asked for it ASAP. So this is what we said:

Renée Harrell is the semi-pseudonym of Renée and Harrell Turner, a wife-and-husband writing team. Their first mystery novel was written under a much more famous pseudonym and was published by Simon & Shuster (USA) and Simon & Shuster UK (Pocket Books) in...um, the UK. whis•pers is their first Ann Lippens mystery. To learn more about Renée Harrell, their writing projects, theThings We're Doing, theThings We Like, andThat Thing We Didgo to MarsNeedsWriters.com. To learn more about the next Ann Lippens mystery, ru•mors, contact them through MarsNeedsWriters@gmail.com.

Oh, and about ru•mors, the sequel to the first Ann Lippens mystery? We haven't written a word of it. We've plotted it, we'd love to write it, but we want to know we can sell it, too, before putting words on paper. If the first story does well, then we'll write the second. Until then...it's just a ru•mor.

We no longer have an editor for our novel. But we somehow do have...(Dec. 22, 2009)...a publication date for whis•pers. You might think, if the book has a publication date, it must need an editor...but you'd be wrong.

Today, we received a e-mail from our publisher. Even though Ye Olde Publisher isn't our editor, she's managed to provide us with our manuscript's first round of edits and she's asked for the Marketing Strategy for the novel. Here's a secret, from us to you: This site is pretty much our entire Marketing Strategy for the novel. We hope you'll tell your friends, they'll tell their friends, and we'll sell maybe four copies of the thing. That is our one great hope for whis•pers: that four complete strangers buy the novel, read the novel and love the novel. We sell those four copies, we're satisfied. At that point, we'll consider our writing career a success.

Since our publisher never comes to Mars Needs Writers, she'll never know how little it takes to make us happy.

(No, idiot, this site isn't the whole of our Marketing Strategy. Not really. As our novel moves closer to reality, we'll do what every other writer does to sell their words. We'll pimp ourselves on MySpace and Facebook, we'll make our friends pimp us on their MySpace and Facebook sites, we'll annoy our acquaintances at the various boards that we haunt, we'll pressure family members into promising to buy electronic First Editions of our book...and, in the course of all of this, we may just spark a few fresh ideas that will actually stir an interest in our work.)

But the big news for today? Our publication date is August, 2010. Yay!

Sometimes, you have to pay it forward...(Dec. 17, 2009)...which, in our case, meant that we volunteered to read part of someone else's unpublished manuscript and offer some feedback on that person's work-in-progress. Trust us: Unpublished and under-published writers are always looking for a fresh viewpoint on their words. If writers were to rely solely on the opinions of their friends and lovers, they'd be convinced that their every effort was a masterpiece.

That's not because our friends and lovers really, truly think that we've done sterling work. That's because our friends and lovers want to remain our friends and lovers. Keep that in mind the next time you ask someone you like to give you their "honest" opinion.

Unfortunately, this particular manuscript isn't ready for a reader as of yet. In short order, we counted eighteen spelling errors. (And this is a person with Spell-Check. We guess he just wasn't feeling in a Spell-Checking mood that day.) There were errors in format, in grammar, in plotting...and, hand over heart, we're only talking about the challenges we found on the would-be novel's firstpage.

We plugged on as long as we could, provided our feedback and some encouragement, and decided to stay out of the beta reader game for awhile. At least until next year.

After Luke chewed on our pages, what did we do? Well...(Dec. 13, 2009)...we went on vacation, away from the internet, computers, and much of the e-civilization. It really had nothing to do with Luke's comments and everything to do with our plans for the month.

On vacation, we discussed our Luke Review. We agreed that Luke had offered some strong ideas and we've made some changes to the manuscript because of those ideas. We really, truly think that our s-f manuscript is finally finished. Until, that is, somebody else comes along and pays us to make whatever other changes are needed.

Aly's Luck goes out to agents soon -- once we decompress from our holiday.

Luke read our sci-fi manuscript. Here's what he said about it...(Dec. 5, 2009)...the good, the bad, and most of the rest of it. What did we remove from his review of Aly's Luck? Some plot points that he addressed that wouldn't make any sense to anyone that hasn't read the novel. Which is, at this point and time, is -- um, almost everybody.

As much as we'd prefer to share only the good parts version, we can't do that. Not to you and you. So here it goes:

The Luke Review -- Aly's Luck by Renée HarrellSometimes you're looking for a serious novel, a piece of fiction that will alter your perceptions and deliver some deeper meaning that will haunt your waking hours. However, when you step away from being overly serious, sometimes you want to read something light, fun, funny even. That, at the beginning, was the goal of Luke Reviews. Yes, some works are more serious than others but they're all meant to be books you pick up for fun, for enjoyment, and that can be appreciated on that level. Therefore, when I was given the opportunity to review Renée Harrell's manuscript, Aly's Luck, it seemed like a perfect match.

Aly is a unique woman on a rather unusual vacation to the Bugworld, a dangerous planet that she seeks out for her thrill-seeking tendencies. Dobbins, crook, cheat, and all-around ruffian, along with his constant companion, the 'changer, Syr, arrived on the world in slightly less glamorous circumstances. As things seem to go wrong for all three of them, their paths become intertwined with each other, as well as with a rather powerful fungus, a ruthless tyrant, and a rebellion in the making, all as our heroes try to avoid slavery or ending up as part of some Bug's next meal.

At first, I was a bit unsure about the novel. The beginning throws you right into the story, which can be a wonderful plot device, but I felt that I was struggling to catch up just a little too much. And, as I was on the verge of feeling comfortable with the story, there was an abrupt shift to a second group of protagonists. I was worried that the plot wouldn't hold up for me and would fall victim to its own fast pace-at-the-cost-of-story.

I couldn't have been more wrong. With only one major stumble in the rest of the text, making me pause to try to figure out if I'd missed something, the story meshed together brilliantly into a fast-paced adventure story, with wonderfully evil villains, fun aliens and, most impressive of all, the humor worked.

Once past the very beginning, you're in for a wonderfully entertaining ride. The story isn't a deep-thinking one but it revels in that and, if you're sitting down to have a good time, Aly's Luck won't disappoint. In the pulp tradition of a plot too zany to question, with black and white characters (because even the thief is truly a nice guy), and that's almost frolic in its telling, this is undeniably a fun story.

The characters are very much not painted in shades of grey, so there is some lack of depth here, but that would likely have ruined the rest of the effect of the novel. Yes, if you pushed too hard, parts of the plot may not have stayed up under the pressure but, frequently, their correction would mess up a lot of the fun parts, creating a conundrum.

Yet I like that. It reminds me of the old science fiction stories and, in particular, movies. It was a lot of fun. It was a light, quick read. If you want a deep, thought-provoking read, you might check elsewhere but if you're seeking sheer entertainment, check out Aly's Luck and you are guaranteed not to be disappointed.8.5/10

What does Mars need? More things than you ever imagined...(Dec. 2, 2009)...and we know how good your imagination is.

A Google search of "Mars Needs" brings up nearly two million listings. ("Venus Needs" brings up under 40,000. "Uranus Needs"? Under two thousand. Don't ask why we looked for these things.) Mars Needs Women, the 1960s sci-fi flick that inspired our bowling team, draws the most attention. It was a great title for a bad movie. Shot in two weeks, Mars Needs Women featured bad lighting and chunks of stock footage. But we like watching the flick because we enjoy bad, bad movies.

We've also discovered Mars Needs Moms, a Berkeley Breathed book for kids that will soon be a movie for families. Probe a little further and you'll find Mars Needs Cows/Gears/Millionaires/Catholics/Lunchboxes and Landscape Photographers...we kid you not. The old red planet apparently needs a lot of things.

Us? We only need you and you. And wine. We did mention that, right? Thanks for stopping by.

Here's the scary part...(Nov. 30, 2009)...Luke Forney has sent words that he's started reading the manuscript to Aly's Luck. (See our Nov. 6, 2009 listing if you wonder why we care.)

Luke has offered to provide his personal feedback on our pages in the form of one of his famous Luke Reviews. He's even willing to let us print a the review on our Blog-O-Rama.

That makes one of us nervous. Time for more wine.We were delighted to hear...(Nov. 27, 2009)...from a Fencken. The clever Cynthia Fencken Maynard discovered our site -- and Fencken's Guide to Intergalactic Travel (see below) -- through a Google search. She also provided a little info from the Fenckenipedia: "Did you know that many, many of the Fenckens you find when you google are actually 1 Fencken...my 2nd cousin, Bill, who lives in Arizona. And so does his dad. ALL the Fenckens in the US (and there aren't that many!) are related!"

For some reason, it has made us very happy to hear from a Fencken. The Fenckens are a small tribe (a very small tribe) and we never expected to actually make contact with one of 'em. Even though we don't believe in signs...this seems to be a good sign.

"How I Became a Famous Novelist"...(Nov. 24, 2009)...is an absolutely terrific, funny novel by Steve Hely. It's so good that we wish we'd written it (and, of course, SH got his book published in hardcover and paperback so that's a major plus in any writer's world). After finishing the book, we wondered if we might have any writing tips to help our e-audience become Famous Novelists on their own. To our surprise, we actually do.

Writing Tip #1: Know somebody. In our earliest writing days -- and before we sacrificed a few years to the seductive world of teleplays and screenplays -- we were desperate to sell something to somebody. When we read that a book packager was looking for writers, we got excited. We sent in a novel outline for their YA mystery series because...well, in younger days, we'd really enjoyed their YA mystery series. Not knowing any better, we addressed our query letter to the packager's VP.

A few weeks later, the phone rings. The company editor likes our outline. Wants to send us a book contract. And, oh, by the way, how is it that we know the company's vice-president?

We didn't know the VP, sadly, and we tell the editor that. (Writing Tip #2: Keep your secrets.) The editor is surprised, embarrassed, but sends us the contract, anyway. The book comes out, goes into additional printings, is sold overseas, makes the packager some decent money. We'd signed a flat-rate contract (Writing Tip #3: Avoid work-for-hire contracts) and the publisher was happy.

We remain convinced, to this day, that we'd never have received that phone call if the editor hadn't thought we were connected. So our best and most important tip? Know somebody.

Well, one of us got sick. Unfortunately...(Nov. 20, 2009)...it was the one of us that tends to update this Blog-O-Rama. Since we're both reluctant to cruise over to the MD's office, we've been waiting (and waiting and waiting) for Nature to take her course and fix things. Busy with other things, She refused to help out.

So, today, we buckled and saw the physician. The doctor did his magic, prescribed his antibiotics, and promised that health will descend upon the afflicted in a week or so. He made an absolute promise.

Unless the antibiotic doesn't work. Then we're to return to the office....Note to Luke Forney: Luke, man, what are you doing? When you should be studying, you're reading Giffen (love Giffen), Campbell and Kurt Vonnegut. Sweet Lord in Heaven, Vonnegut. Then, over break, you're going to read our manuscript -- and compare our pages to those guys? Oh, no, you don't.

Listen up. The next book you review? Make it the heartwarming "Coming Out" by Danielle Steel. You know "Coming Out" must be good because DS has sold over 500 million books. DS must know how to write because she's written, like, seventy friggin' books so far and somebody keeps publishing the things. And one reviewer of the novel, wrote -- in caps, "I REALLY ENJOYED THIS BOOK. IT GOT TO THE POINT FROM THE VERY BEGINING. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT TO ANYONE WHO LIKES TO READ BOOKS THAT GETS TO THE POINT."

Read "Coming Out", Luke. Then read our manuscript.

Bored now. Time to do something else...(Nov. 14, 2009)...because, really, the worst part of writing is waiting for other people to respond to that writing. Wicked Games is still floating about. We have a contract for whis•pers but the editing process hasn't begun. Luke will be reading Aly's Luck and reporting back but that's not until later this month.

Neither one of us feels like working on Dust today and we don't have any other future projects in mind. Instead, maybe we'll do a book review or two (and, if you like book reviews, you might travel over to Random Things).

"I weep for the souls of the trees that died to make this book..."(Nov. 6, 2009)...is not the kind of comment that you'll find at Luke Reviews. (SFX magazine printed the "weep" review. We don't know which book they were weeping over. We'd make some snarky remark of our own but, who knows?, we may need SFX magazine on our side some day.) Luke Forney isn't that kind of book reviewer. He's got class...and, oddly enough, he's in class as I type this. We were lucky to find him.

With Luke's permission, please know that he's our Anonymous Reader. Renée is happy because Luke is a Robert E. Howard fan (and, if you go to Luke's site, you'll find a great review of Howard's "Beyond the Black River") and Harrell is happy because Luke is a Stephen King fan (and Luke reviews King's work, too. Check the Luke Reviews archives).

Luke will be giving Aly's Luck a looksie by the end of November. Good or bad, we'll share his overall opinion with you. Unless it starts out with, "I weep for the souls of the trees that died to make this book".

Trying to find someone to read an unpublished manuscript...(Nov. 2, 2009)...is usually a chore. Few people are willing to look at a book in its beta stage. The absolutely-right reader has to be well-read in the genre, has to be willing to give criticism when its merited or praise where it's been earned, and -- most importantly -- needs to be someone whose opinion is respected by others. By "others", we mean "us".

For Aly's Luck, we've found exactly that reader. We are delighted that Anonymous Reader has agreed to read our pages.

If he agrees, we'll share his name in a later post. If he allows, we'll share some of his thoughts, too.

We called our travel guide, "Fencken's Guide to Intergalactic Travel"...(Oct. 28, 2009)...because we thought the name "Fencken" was such a silly, fun, nonsensical kind of last name -- and our current writing project, Aly's Luck, is a silly, fun, nonsensical s-f novel. Should Aly's Luck ever make it to publication, you'll find an excerpt from Fencken's Guide near the beginning of the book. And, yep, it's silly and fun.

Today, we finally got around to Googling the name and discovered that there are many, many different Fenckens in the world. Who'd a thunk it? (Google also says that there are 194,000 references to "who'd a thunk it". Who'd a thunk that?)

We discussed using a different name before deciding, what the hell: If there are that many Fenckens out there, then one of them might well have written the travel guide that's referenced in our novel. So we kept the name. After all, it fits.

In related news, we've just finished the third draft of Aly's Luck. This makes us happy.

After publishing the website, we eagerly notified our editor...(Oct. 22, 2009)...who writes back today to say, "Yay!". And then asked us for the website address.

Hmmm. Since the big search engines don't bother listing a site for weeks, this is probably something we should have mentioned originally. Guess that's why she gets the big editor money.

Homer Simpson: "Now it's time to play the waiting game..."(Oct. 15, 2009)...but, then, Homer goes on to say: "Oh, the waiting game sucks. Let's play Hungry Hungry Hippos!"

We're with Homer. How we wish we owned a Hungry Hungry Hippos game.

Since we don't, we've decided to play with Kiva, instead. (You might want to play it, too. You've find it at kiva.org).

Days later, the publishers received the contracts...(Oct. 7, 2009)...not that many days later, really. Generally, we're too...um, thrifty...to want to send the pages via Priority Mail but the postal person told us that was our only option if we wanted a Delivery Confirmation Receipt. We did want a Delivery Confirmation Receipt. The USPS delivered the contracts to the publisher today.

And now we play the waiting game.

So we signed the thing...(Oct. 5, 2009)...and the contract went out in the mail. We're (probably) about to become published authors -- after Rochelle contacts us again, we do some editing and a cover is selected and...whatever else is needed. We'll let you know.

When the whis•pers contract arrived...(Oct. 2, 2009) ...it came as an electronic attachment. Multiple pages but straightforward terminology and, after a careful reading, not too hard to decipher. We keep the paperback rights, the publisher keeps the electronic rights, and we get to see our baby take a leap into the electronic void. We'll take a couple of days to think things over but, honestly, I think this is going to work out for us.

While we waited for our book contract...(Oct. 1, 2009) ...another publisher contacted us. They liked the first three chapters of our woolly werewolf romance, Wicked Games, and they've asked to see the rest of the piece. This is our romance novella, the story that Renée insists on calling, "Werewolf porn." You should know that this particular tale isn't porn but is, rather, a sensual romance that happens to involve a werewolf.

Actually, two werewolves. Two sexy werewolves. But our heroine, she's NOT a werewolf. She just decides, um...that werewolf lovin' could be a fun thing. The story also involves true love, a murder mystery, Romeo & Juliet, and one of the world's richest men.

And it's only 15,000 words.

72 Hours later....(Sept. 28, 2009) ...we still haven't heard from the "You'll Hear From Us in 48 Hours!" web design service. Desperately, we decide that we maybe oughta design our very own website. We also decide to find a website name that positively screams, "The Wit and Wisdom of Renée Harrell!"

Strangely enough, TheWitAndWisdomofReneeHarrell.com name is available for purchase. (We really did check. Think of how bizarre it would have been if someone had actually registered that dot-com.)

We decide not to use that. Tossing names back and forth, we remembered our old bowling league of years ago: Mars Needs Bowlers and decide to use Mars Needs Writers as our site address. A couple of hours later, we also find an easy web design thingie on Weebly.com and start pulling the pieces together.

The thing you're looking at now is the result.

Looking (again) at the publisher's website...(Sept. 25, 2009) ...we learn that there's no way around it. When and if the contract arrives, we'll need a "web presence" to pimp our novel. A blog site would be good. Maybe we should post on Facebook every now and then, too. A website? That's best of all.

We're happy to oblige but what do we know about technology? One of us has an eye in her mouth, the other one is a pretend cowboy. So we contact two web design services. One of 'em auto-promised an answer in the next 48 hours. The other one wanted $600 for a basic layout (we're guessing, something like this but better). Who knows if we'll even make $600 from the book? Hmmm....

So then our editor said...(Sept. 14, 2009)...there had been a mix-up with our contract. The publisher had sent the wrong contract to the editor (really? What was wrong about it?) just before said publisher jetted off on book-related business.

The new contract is coming. Soon.

About that website...(Sept. 1, 2009)...can you believe that someone has registered the name, ReneeHarrell.com? They're not using it yet, it's parked with GoDaddy.com, but they've actually paid a fee to retain its use.

This stuns the both of us. There's another Renée Harrell? Unbelievable. More unbelievable? There's even a ReneeHerrell.com.

We have to think of another website name. ReneeAndHarrell.com? Please, God, no.

"It is my pleasure to offer you a contract...(August 25, 2009)...for whis•pers. I loved this book and feel it would be a wonderful addition to our line. From the spooky premise to the crisp writing, I truly enjoyed your story." So writes Rochelle, an Acquisitions Editor, from a tiny publishing house.

Contract to follow. Happy happy, joy joy right now.

Only one concern: The publisher expects their authors to have a website.